Leadership Behaviors, Organizational Culture, and Knowledge Management Practices by Hai Nam Nguyen - Assignment Example

?Article Review The of this article is “Leadership behaviors, organizational culture and knowledge management practices: An empirical investigation.” This article has been coauthored by Hai Nam Nguyen and Sherif Mohamed. This fifteen page long article was published in Vol. 30, No. 2 of the Journal of Management Development in the year 2011. The name of the publisher of this article is Emerald Group Publishing Limited. More and more organizations have started to use knowledge management in their attempt of gaining competitive advantage, as a tool for leveraging their core competencies. As a result, knowledge management is being widely acknowledged for its positive role in the success of organizations. A vast body of research in the past has shown that leadership behaviors and organizational culture serve as hurdles in the creation and leveraging of knowledge. Effective knowledge management depends upon an organization’s social ecology along with IT platforms. This imparts the need for exploring the cultural and human aspects of business and articulating the way leadership styles and organizational culture influence the tendency of an organization to develop and apply knowledge. This article is about investigation of the relationship between behaviors of leadership and the practices of knowledge management. This article particularly tends to study the influence of the behaviors of transformational and transactional styles of leadership on knowledge management as well as the moderating impact that the culture of the Australia based small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) organizations has on this relationship. To achieve this, the authors proposed four hypotheses in total to test. The conceptual model used in the research consisted of four constructs; transformational leadership, transactional leadership, organizational culture, and practices of knowledge management. A questionnaire survey was conducted to empirically examine the four hypotheses. Validity and reliability of the data was checked using pre-tested measures and constructs. The questionnaire consisting of 17 items was given to the participants to realize the frequency of use of the different processes of knowledge management in their organizations. The authors measured the leadership styles and the associated behaviors using 36 item Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. The authors measured the organizational culture using the 36 item Denison’s Organizational Cultural Survey. Although 1000 surveys were mailed to the middle managers of the SMEs in Australia, yet with the response rate being only 15.7 per cent, the sample size was 157. Most of the respondents belonged to the middle and senior management level. Middle managers were 44.9 per cent of the total while senior managers were 32.5 per cent. Line managers accounted for 21.7 per cent of the total. This methodology provided the authors with an opportunity to concisely review the basics of knowledge management related to the research, the relationship between knowledge management and leadership as well as that between leadership and the culture of organization. As a result of the research, it was found that transactional leadership and transformational leadership are both related to the practices of knowledge management positively. It was also found that the behaviors of contingent reward leadership and charismatic leadership greatly impact all dimensions of the practices of knowledge management. An unexpected yet interesting finding of the research was that contingent reward leadership has apparently a slightly stronger contribution on all dimensions of the practices of knowledge management compared to the impact of charisma attributed behaviors. Hierarchy and mission organizational culture moderated the relationship between practices of knowledge management and transactional leadership. The most effective behaviors of leadership for the practices of knowledge management were found to be charisma and contingent reward. Development of a successful system of knowledge management depends on the ability of the leaders to draw a balance between transformational and transactional behaviors, participative and authoritative systems, and relationship and task orientation. Current practices of knowledge management are reinforced by transactional leadership. In contrast, behaviors of transformational leadership provide the top executive with the opportunity to adapt the organizational culture and if necessary, adjust it according to the new vision. Since contingent reward and charisma were found to be the most effective behaviors of leadership for the practices of knowledge management, leaders need to focus on the development of these behaviors of leadership as per the requirement of a situation. Leaders need to develop trust and respect on the basis of working with people, on establishing agreements to acquire particular objectives, on the clarification of expectations, and on rewarding the organizational personnel when they achieve their assigned tasks successfully. Training programs can be used to learn the behaviors of transactional and transformational leadership. Development of the behaviors related to transactional and transformational leadership has a positive effect on knowledge management. Since effectiveness of the behaviors of leadership is contingent upon the organizational culture type, leaders need to make effective use of this mechanism to enforce the thinking forms and establish motivation levels and behaviors valuable to the organization. Leaders should regularly spare time to focus on knowledge management and pay attention toward the issues and activities related to knowledge management. The cross-sectional nature of this research was a limitation. There is possibility of emergence of at least some aspect of organizational culture and leadership and its effect on the practices of knowledge management. Additional insights into the way behaviors of leadership and organizational culture’s affect knowledge management may be gained through the data’s longitudinal treatment. The authors could not actually observe the interaction between managers and followers. Survey measures should have been supplemented by observational data so that a comprehensive understanding of the complex leadership forms in a variety of contexts could be developed. I personally think that this research addresses a very important topic. Knowledge management is one of the fundamental qualities of successful organizations in the contemporary age and the way leadership behaviors relate to knowledge management plays a decisive role in the success of an organization. In spite of the aforementioned limitations of this research, the authors have produced very useful results with a lot of implications for leaders and managers of organizations. More research needs to be done to do longitudinal assessment of this relationship. Read More